Regents to recommend new alliance with UMB

While many of this university's top administrators — including university President Wallace Loh — strongly advocated for a merger between this university and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, the Board of Regents ultimately decided to recommend an alternative to a full-blown merger at its meeting Friday.

After state Senate President Mike Miller (D-Calvert and Prince George's) proposed merging the two institutions in January, officials from both universities spent six months studying the potential benefits and drawbacks to uniting the campuses under one name before the Board — a 17-member gubernatorial body that oversees the University System of Maryland — took over the study last month. Ultimately, it unanimously decided a strategic alliance — which would bring together select faculty from both universities in research endeavors and offer joint degree programs — would benefit both institutions without incurring the costs of a merger.

While many of this university's administrators and faculty said uniting the universities as one University of Maryland was the best option, UMB officials were strongly opposed and said they thought a merger was unnecessary and potentially damaging to the goals of the university and the city of Baltimore. But board members said devising a plan to ensure there is more collaboration between the institutions will only benefit both universities.

"The board sees the alliance as the kind of 21st-century model of collaboration that is the right organizational structure for the fast-changing, fiscally challenging environment we see today," University System Chancellor Brit Kirwan said.

After the Board submits its recommendation to the General Assembly this week — which reconvenes Jan. 11 — Loh, Kirwan and UMB President Jay Perman will begin working on a detailed implementation plan to submit to the state legislature by March 1. Although Loh previously said the universities would not reap the benefits of better national rankings without merging, he said he is now focused on moving forward with a strategic alliance.

"As I've said all along — and I said this to the Board — my job is to advocate for the University of Maryland, College Park to do what's best for the university, for the people of Maryland and for our students," Loh said in an interview Saturday. "Once [the Board] made its decision, and if it's the one also endorsed by the General Assembly, I will do my best to abide by it and try to execute it."

The alliance seeks to create more opportunities for interdisciplinary education and research partnerships between the campuses, as well as the Shady Grove campus. Additionally, officials said they hope to commercialize research results by turning them into profitable business ideas by bringing together faculty and students in various departments from both universities.

According to the Board's report, a merger would have put the united University of Maryland in a better position to compete for large interdisciplinary grants, helped put faculty from this university and UMB at the forefront of national bioscience policy debates and raised the merged university's ranking to seventh overall best research institution in the country.

But Kirwan said a strategic alliance will advance both institutions' goals without the complexity of a merger.

"I think we have found a way to take advantage of the benefits of a merger without incurring the huge costs of melding two large, complex and very different bureaucracies," Kirwan said.

The report estimated that a traditional merger could cost more than $100 million, making a strategic alliance with a "lean and nimble" organizational structure the most flexible and appealing option, Kirwan said.

But Board member Charles McMillen said funding will still be a concern, even with the downsized alliance plan.

"We may well see there isn't a lot of money and we still have to find some way to find some accomplishments out of this even if the resources are meager," he said.

State Sen. Jim Rosapepe (D-Anne Arundel and Prince George's), however, said the Board's proposal was a "big step in the right direction" and would help further both universities' goals.

"We need more cooperation between the University of Maryland at College Park and the University System's professional schools in Baltimore," Rosapepe said in a press release. "And we need to do it in a way that enhances the Baltimore campus' leadership in the Baltimore region and the College Park campus' leadership in the Washington, D.C., metro area."

Both universities' deans have already met to discuss collaborative opportunities that will be included in the alliance plan, such as a shared nursing degree program and dual degrees between public policy and public health at this university and social work, law and nursing at UMB.

"You're creating a paradigm by allowing two institutions to add significant value through formal and accountable collaboration while allowing both institutions to keep the autonomy that has made them great," Perman said.

Board member Gary Attman said he would like to see aggressive goals and measurable benchmarks in the finished alliance plan to ensure it is successful.

"We must be mindful of the fact that alliances can be severed, and this vast potential for collaboration has existed for decades but has never been utilized," he said. "Hopefully this time will be different."

lurye@umdbk.com